Fund raising is helped by the right PR

A study has found that getting PR for your startup not only helps get funding (which is obvious) but also helps identify the right kind of PR to help you raise venture capital. The study points out that particular blogs are the ones that venture capitalists are most likely to read., namely TechCrunch, GigaOM and VentureBeat. I’d point out that not all of these are great outlets for getting customers, but OfficeDrop’s experience is pretty similar in that when we get press in these venues we are more likely to get inbound calls from VCs.*

Quoting from the study’s press release: “Besides the fact most venture capitalists only have time to read so many blogs, the research shows that negative coverage of a startup venture has more of an effect than positive coverage. In other words, a venture capitalist is more likely to take notice of a negative blog post about a potential investment than take notice of a positive post. “After all it is more of a rejection process than a selection process,” Aggarwal said. “VCs want to sift through the pile of startup plans on their desks quickly, and are essentially looking for a reason to reject a plan and move on.”

The study also examines how the influence of blogs may change with the progress of a project’s funding rounds. The findings indicate that the effect of blog coverage is strong at the earlier funding rounds, but then it starts to decrease in subsequent funding rounds. “This makes sense, because in the early stages, all they may have is a dream of what they could be,” Aggarwal said. “As time passes, users, usage, and other accounting measures start to give a better signal about their actual potential.””